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CHAPTER TEN
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REMARKABLE DIAMONDS AND GEMS
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Jewelry is older than dressmaking, and its radiant variety has expressed the individuality of women since the dawn of time. There always has been and there always will be
an element of mystery in the appeal of the bits of bright and colored
stones that we call gems. This appeal is not solely to the sense of
beauty although beauty has very much to do with it. Nor is it entirely
a question of value although again the sentiment of value is very closely linked to the lure of gems. In many things, but especially in the buying and wearing of gems, we desire most that which is rare, that which other people cannot afford to have, that which proclaims our opulence.
It
is undoubtedly this element of barbaric heritage that impels the man or
woman of today to pay many times the value of a synthetic sapphire or
ruby for a natural stone of the same kind. And this in spite of the
fact that in all esÂsential characteristics the gems are identical, and
no eye but that of a trained gemmologist can discern the differÂence
between Nature's product and that which is made of the same substance
by man.
84
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